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>From Swastika to Jim Crow
The story of Black-Jewish relations in the United States is a long
and complex one.... Jews were among those who worked to establish the
NAACP in 1909. African-American newspapers were among the first in
the U.S. to denounce Nazism.... FROM SWASTIKA TO JIM CROW creates
hope and reminds us of a time in U.S. history when the two
communities came together.
- David Horowitz, Washington Review
In the year 2001, the tension between Blacks and Jews remains a
visible symbol of America's racial divide. The history of this
relationship is a tumultuous one, ironically full of ugly twists and
turns interspersed with moments of real human transcendence.
Shared Empathy
Since the time of slavery, Blacks have in some ways identified with
the Jewish experience. They compared their situation in the American
South to that of the Jews in Egypt, as expressed in Black spirituals
such as "Go Down, Moses." The longing for their own exodus inspired
the popularity of "Zion" in the names of many Black churches. Black
nationalists used the Zionist movement as a model for their own Back-
to-Africa movement.
Public lynching of Blacks in the South
A group of American editors and publishers in Dachau are shown the
corpses of prisoners during an inspection of the camp
Courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
Over the years Jews have also expressed empathy with the plight of
Blacks. In the early 1900s, Jewish newspapers drew parallels between
the Black movement out of the South and the Jews' escape from Egypt,
pointing out that both Blacks and Jews lived in ghettos, and calling
anti-Black riots in the South "pogroms". Stressing the similarities
rather than the differences between the Jewish and Black experience
in America, Jewish leaders emphasized the idea that both groups would
benefit the more America moved toward a society of merit, free of
religious, ethnic and racial restrictions.
>From the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, Blacks and Jews
marched arm-in-arm. In 1909, W.E.B. Dubois, Julius Rosenthal, Lillian
Wald, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, Stephen Wise and Henry Malkewitz formed
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP). One year later other prominent Jewish and Black leaders
created the Urban League. Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington
worked together in 1912 to improve the educational system for Blacks
in the South.
Thus, in the 1930s and '40s when Jewish refugee professors arrived at
Southern Black Colleges, there was a history of overt empathy between
Blacks and Jews, and the possibility of truly effective
collaboration. Professor Ernst Borinski organized dinners at which
Blacks and Whites would have to sit next to each other - a simple yet
revolutionary act. Black students empathized with the cruelty these
scholars had endured in Europe and trusted them more than other
Whites. In fact, often Black students - as well as members of the
Southern White community - saw these refugees as "some kind of
colored folk."
The unique relationship that developed between these teachers and
their students was in some ways a microcosm of what was beginning to
happen in other parts of the United States. The American Jewish
Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the Anti-Defamation
League were central to the campaign against racial prejudice. Jews
made substantial financial contributions to many civil rights
organizations, including the NAACP, the Urban League, the Congress of
Racial Equality, and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
About 50 percent of the civil rights attorneys in the South during
the 1960s were Jews, as were over 50 percent of the Whites who went
to Mississippi in 1964 to challenge Jim Crow Laws.
Pages: 1 | 2
"Even amidst anti-Semitism, the anti-Black situation confers white-
skin privilege on Jews."
- Cornel West
"By calling Jews 'white,' Blacks are in effect denying [the Jewish]
history of oppression.... Jews have been socially and legally
discriminated against, have been the subject of racism and genocide,
and in those terms Jews are not white."
- Michael Lerner
from Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin by Michael Lerner and
Cornel West
Black Power and Division
With the late 1960s came the birth of the Black Power movement,
emphasizing self- determination, self-defense tactics and racial
pride, and representing a radical break from the nonviolence and
racial integration espoused by the Reverend Martin Luther King. The
separatist rise of Black nationalism was just one of the difficulties
facing the Black-Jewish alliance since the end of the Civil Rights
movement. The rapid decline of American anti-Semitism since 1945,
combined with the nation's continuing pervasive racism, convinced
Blacks there was an insurmountable racial gulf separating the two
groups. Blacks no longer perceived the division as one between the
persecutors and their victims - including Jews - but between those
with white skin and those with black. Through the eyes of Blacks,
Jews became Whites with all the privileges their skin color won them,
regardless of alliances they had in the past.
As early as the first two decades after World War II, James Baldwin,
Kenneth Clark and other Blacks encouraged liberal Jews to give up the
"special relationship." This came in part from a fear that the Jews'
determined belief in their bond with Blacks would eventually become
offensive and, paradoxically, provoke Black anti-Semitism. The
prospect of this shift was incomprehensible to Jews who believed that
their own history, culminating in the Holocaust, defined them as
oppressed and thus incapable of being the oppressor. And yet, as
Baldwin pointed out in Georgia has the Negro and Harlem has the Jew,
each time a Black person paid his Jewish landlord, shopped at a
Jewish-owned store, was taught by a Jewish school teacher, was
supervised by a Jewish social worker, or was paid by a Jewish
employer, the fact of Black subservience to Jews was driven home.
Jews continued to call for the maintenance of a Black-Jewish alliance
despite the socioeconomic differences between the two groups.
Positions hardened around such divisive issues as affirmative action
in the schools, Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitic rhetoric, the Crown
Heights/Harlem riots and the Million Man March - all exacerbated by
the use of stereotypes in sensationalized media coverage.
Hatred and Misunderstanding
In 1991, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York, a car
driven by an Lubavitch Jew spun out of control onto a sidewalk,
killing one Black child and injuring another. As angry Black
residents beat the car's driver, the privately run Jewish Hatzolah
ambulance arrived and workers began attending to the child pinned
under the car. When a New York city ambulance arrived, the technician
instructed the Hatzolah driver to remove the Lubavitch driver from
the escalating scene and take him to the hospital. Black onlookers
were infuriated and rumors of the Jew being aided first flew through
the neighborhood. The streets filled with shouts of "Get the Jews!"
and that night, a mob of 10 to 15 angry Black teens and men fatally
stabbed a young Orthodox Holocaust researcher.
For three days Jewish residents of Crown Heights and reporters were
beaten, cars overturned and set afire, and stores looted and
firebombed by angered Black residents. Finally hundreds of police
officers in riot gear restored a relative calm. The state's official
investigation into the riots found that city authorities and police
failed to respond appropriately. Lubavitchers say this was an
experience few have forgotten.
That same year, an anonymous group of African Americans associated
with the Reverend Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam published The
Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews, detailing the
involvement of Jews in the Atlantic slave trade and Pan-American
slavery. Though Jewish historians had already produced a significant
body of scholarship on the subject, the information had never
appeared in a publication written for a non-scholarly audience. The
book caused quite a furor because none of its data was placed in any
context that would indicate its broader historical significance. The
role of Jews in the enslavement of Blacks was exaggerated - not with
misinformation but through calculated misrepresentation.
Over the years Farrakhan has angered Jews, Catholics, gays, feminists
and others with various slurs, including his description of Judaism
as a "gutter religion" and Jewish landlords as "bloodsuckers." In
1995, Farrakhan spoke for over two hours to over 400,000 listeners at
the Million Man March. Many believe that was more the result of a
desperate need for leadership than a widespread anti-Jewish feeling.
"It's not about Farrakhan," said one marcher. "[It's about] Black men
uniting for a cause."
"Once again, sons and daughters of slavery and Holocaust survivors
are bound together with a shared agenda, bound by their hopes and
their fears about national public policy."
- Jesse Jackson
"[The election debacle is] an opportunity for Jews and Blacks to come
back together."
- Rabbi Steven Jacobs
Coming Together?
In Palm Beach, Florida after the November 2000 presidential election,
the Reverend Jesse Jackson asked that Jews and Blacks unite as they
did in the Civil Rights Era - this time to push for an accurate vote
count in the presidential race.
American History has taught Blacks and Jews two very different
lessons. In the Jewish experience of the U.S., education and hard
work eventually pay off and thus the future is full of possibility.
Blacks, however, face a legacy of three and a half centuries of
racism on American soil and the irrefutable sense that something more
than dedication is required. Currently there exist huge disparities
between Jews and Blacks in terms of crime, family breakdown, drug
addiction, alcoholism and educational achievements. The "culture of
poverty" that exists in today's inner city is incomparable to
anything in the American Jewish experience.
End<{{{
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